Saying Goodbye

I’ve been utterly remiss in keeping this blog updated. I tell myself I will, that I’ll record everything in due time, but between the lack of internet, the preoccupation with projects and events, and the feeling that most of what I did isn’t necessarily worth recording, I never got around to it.

Maybe it was worth recording. I am always surprised when I’m told people actually read this blog. To them: Thank you, and I apologize.

The last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind. I suppose all my life in Mongolia has been a whirlwind, even when a frozen winter seemed to deaden the progress of things. But spring in Mongolia makes things teem and stir, and in summer, happenings occur with the corybantic desperateness that accompanies the understanding that, in a place like Mongolia, winter is always just around the corner.

My life in spring was, for the most part, consumed entirely by the dental project. After literally months of working and planning—checking teeth, checking hotels, checking schools; arranging schedules, arranging lodging, arranging transportation; talking to directors, talking to teachers, talking to doctors and governors and NGOs… —it happened. The dental clinic happened.

6 days, 5 schools, 9 dentists, 5 dental personnel… 2126 children.

Countless volunteers helped us. English teachers from every school helped out, and even went to other schools to help with translation. Students came out to help, working with dentists, training adults to do fluoride or dental education. School staff pitched in—school doctors, accountants, teachers, directors.

World Vision provided transportation and printing. Mercy Corps helped out with logistics. The Education department helped with printing and communication. As I planned and put this together, I was witness to something truly amazing: an entire town—people from different and sometimes competing agencies helping one another, working together—all coming together to help the children… strangers becoming colleagues, people becoming friends, and individuals becoming a single community, filled with common purpose.

In other countries KIDS visits, I heard, they sometimes need to hire translators. They sometimes need to bring food for the children. They sometimes worry that children aren’t taken care of at home. Not in Mongolia. Mongolians cherish their children; all the children are well cared for, well loved, well fed and taken care of. And people need no more motivation to give their time but the knowledge that they are making healthier Mongolia’s most precious resource: the children. And it makes me proud, because, though I am a foreigner here, they are ‘manaikhan’—my people.

Every day during the dental clinic I got up at 6am to get to the hotel to deal with any issues that had come up (the hotel was really bad). Every evening I helped resolve any issues that came up. I arranged impromptu meetings, planned for the next day, fielded questions, … and I went to bed late and utterly exhausted. Every day was a struggle to get out of bed, but once the dental clinic began, I didn’t feel it. It always subsided looking into the eyes of the children who came to the clinic, not to return until the clinic ended for the day.

By the last day, the weariness was all-consuming. I was so utterly spent; I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted in all my life. As I told my parents, though, it's that weariness that you get when you give everything you have, not just physically, but emotionally--when you put your whole heart and soul in something for a long time, until you're spent and can't give any more. But it's not a bad feeling, per se, because I know it comes from caring so deeply that nothing short of all you have is enough.

When the dental clinic had finished and the dentists had gone home and I was left with only the weariness and the memory, I realized that, though it would be heart-wrenching, I was able to leave Zavkhan. I gave everything I had and I achieved something good and can leave knowing that I have nothing to regret.

Now I have left my site. It has been hard: in soft, quiet moments I feel the ache that comes from leaving a home that will be difficult to return to.

Some people think the hardest part of being a Peace Corps volunteer is the hard work—the making fires, the irregular power outages, the washing clothes by hand in a shallow bucket. Others think it would be the culture shock, trying to learn the language and integrate with the people. But for me, the biggest danger was falling in love with a place I would have to leave, and the heartbreak of that departure.

 No, not danger; inevitability.

You don’t even realize how many people you know, how many friends you’ve made, how many brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers you have, until you have to say goodbye. I’ll never know the full impact I made, but I feel the impact in me as big as a crater. I feel the loss in me as a deep ache in my chest. I stay moving because if I slow, I feel the longing for that home so acutely and the distance so distinctly and the difficulty of return so painfully that it’s hard to keep the tears at bay.

The ache is great. But the joy is greater.

Dortai. Hairtai. Bayartai.